hear of John again as farming abbey lands in this adjoining parish, Theberton,' probably the present Grange Farm.

All this while our canons' abode was the island Abbey. The industry of early monks had vastly improved it. They made a raised causey, which the writer has traced, across the mud from the south shore of the Myssemeare. Round their isle, too, they enclosed a strip of foreshore, encircled it with a sea wall yet existing, and, pumping dry the enclosure, formed what Netherlanders call a "polder." Nature, moreover, had helped them, for as the tides cach winter-time undermined the sandy headland to north of them, the light stuff was swept to southward and so formed a bar across the estuary. North of the isle, the scour of the river yet kept a mouth open; but south of it, in the direct set of the tide, the bar became a shingly beach; and then the monks pumped out the space between beach and causey and so gained another "polder."

As, however, the monks rose in the world the horizon of their views extended. To "proud possessioners," with rents from thirty parishes, what were a few poor acres of marsh land? The lowly old church, too, how unworthy now of their opulence! And the mean cells, intended for poor ascetics, how unmeet to lodge my lords the canons! Contrasting the regal abbeys of St. Benet-at-Hulm and St. Edmund's Bury, our monks thought scorn of their own humble house on the remote island.

2

Then, on a day a lurid cloud hid the heavens, and a dread plague desolated the land-the terrible Black Death. Of every two human beings alive throughout East Anglia one died. Two-thirds of all the parish priests of the Diocese of Norwich perished. A short respite, and England was again smitten by the angel of pestilence. Our monks looked out from their damp cells over the steaming swamps and fetid mud of the Myssemeare, and besought heaven for deliverance. And their prayers, it seemed, were answered; for, just at that juncture, Robert, Earl of Suffolk, their then patron, offered to build for them a new abbey.

It is common observation that for the later-built convents the choicest sites were generally selected. Our canons had not far to seek; no lack was there within their own manor of "healthful and pleasant situations for their seemly houses." A new abbey soon rose, two miles or so inland from the old fane, and near a roadwhich still exists-much travelled then by "seekers of hallows.'

66

1 Formerly spelt Tibberton," which is said to mean (though I do not know its derivation) "Holy town."

Much of that road is yet a "wikkede weye" even in summertime. Then probably it was all of it and all the year round "deep, noyous, foul, and therefore jeopardous"; and a new house of pious hospitality would doubtless be a welcome boon to wayfarers: the few pilgrims to local shrines, as the holy rood of Dunwich and St. Margaret of Southwold, as well as to the greater stream of "Hermites on a heape with hoked staves," who, guided by the starry galaxy, "wenten to Walsingham."

Of this second abbey no description or picture has come down to us; it did not exist long, not one generation. That it was built, and that in 1389 it was burned down, is about all we know of it. A third abbey succeeded it on the same site, and of this third abbey it is that the ruins are yet standing. During the building of this third abbey the monks again inhabited their original convent by the sea.

How much the fire consumed of the second abbey is not certainly known, but it is hardly probable that solid masses of flint and mortar could have been utterly consumed. It is likely, in fact, that great part of the walls, and even some tracery of windows, withstood the flames; for Decorated work, almost out of fashion at the date of the rebuilding-though indeed it may have been copied or restoredis traceable in the now existing ruins.

That the third abbey was not less magnificent than the second is probable. Money would not have been wanting; for donors were zealous, as Sir H. Spelman quaintly says, to offer, "like Abel, their best to God." The ground plan was perhaps little altered. The church now in ruins is 168 feet long-16 feet longer than is Oxford Cathedral. The east end yet remains, with fine flint-work, so characteristic of the Suffolk churches, on its exterior; and the opening of a grand east window, and the walls of the choir, and of both the choir aisles, and of the two transepts, are yet standing. The nave is gone. South of where the nave was, walls yet enclose the ancient cloister garth; and south of that again yet stand the walls, and the perfect west end pierced by a fine window, of a noble refectory. There is, besides, a great mass of ruin of what was probably a vaulted guest chamber, of the monastic offices, and the abbots' lodgings; and not far off, to the north-west, are more crumbling remains ruins of the stabling and farm buildings which, patched up now, are put to their old use by a modern farmer.

A sadder sight by far than the older ruins is this desecrated abbey. Of Glanvil's church-a humble fane but fifteen by seven of the writer's paces-only four rude-built, time-worn walls are left; yet

and marshes, are very impressive; no false note jars upon one there. But here how different! In the midst of these ruins stands a smug modern farm-house; the once noble and lofty church is now a bullock yard; in the refectory, where the monks met at meals, "their eyes on the table, their ears with the reader, their hearts with God," hogs now wallow; and the once hallowed ground whereto holy men resorted to muse upon life's mysteries among their brethren's graves, is profaned, even forgotten.

Oules doe scrike where the sweetest hymmes

Lately were songe;

Toades and serpents hold their dennes

Where the palmers did throng.

Sordid is the aspect of a once sacred place. Only kindly ivy covers, at all seasons, the nakedness of its desolation, and each recurring spring lights up the grey old walls with cornices of wall-flowers. There is now but one spot, one quiet nook, wherein the ancient peace seems to linger. Shut in by the crumbling ruins is hidden a garden, where sweet herbs grow, and flowers bloom, and bees gather honey. It was the central cell of the convent, the old cloisters. Here brethren walked and catechised, and in their lighter moods, as Walter de Map said, "chattered together like parrots." Here novices were taught the traditions of their community-how, when that wicked King, who "defiled even hell" when he went there, brought the Pope's interdict upon England, and church bells might not ring, priests might not minister, and corpses lay on the ground unburied, this house had the high privilege still to celebrate Mass in their conventual church; how that they could freely elect their own abbots; and how that, during vacancies of the abbot's office, no lord might touch their temporalities; and how they were not liable for corrodies to any king's servants or founders' kin, nor for pensions to unbeneficed king's chaplains, as were other convents.

And the talk of the older monks, good gardeners and farmers as they were, would wander to horticulture and husbandry. Could not the art of growing other "sauce" than leeks, onions, broad beans, and cabbages-such toothsome esculents, for example, as lettuces, spinach, carrots, beetroot, turnips, even rhubarb-be brought to England from the Continent? And, no doubt, the prices of farm produce, wool, corn, live and dead stock, would be duly descanted on. In 1390 wool had been low-its export being forbidden-three shillings two shillings, and even twenty-pence the stone. Of wheat the price jumped up and down amazingly. In 1435, for example,

even £1. 6s. 8d., say at the present value of money from £16 to £21 the quarter; the next year it fell to 5s. 4d., or say £4! Horses seem not to have been dear; in 1425, when wheat was at 4s. the quarter, the Prior of Burcester, a house in Oxfordshire, bought for £1. 6s. 8d. a bay horse for his own stable. And farming tools were cheap; a plough, then not an elaborate implement, could be had for 10d. But labour, on the other hand, was high. The monks possibly repented having freed their bondsmen, when now a man could not be hired for less than a penny a day (say eight shillings a week in our money) besides his food and drink, which was no "peny ale" indeed . . . "ne no pece of bakoun"; he would have "fresch flesch, or fische fryed or bake," all of the best, like the modern miner.

And for cloister debates there would be no lack of topics far more exciting. Not the King's foreign wars, perhaps the commonalty scarcely hecded them till Agincourt resounded through the land— but home questions of grave moment to even recluses; as the rise and the suppression of Lollardry. Even in these late monkeries there must have been a few earnest Christians who held Wyclif's teaching for truth, and loathed the very name of the Statute of Herctics. And again, monks there were, themselves of lowly parentage-serfs perhaps but for their tonsure-who felt their hearts bleed for the folk on whose behalf John Ball "rang his bell and suffered.” Again, the Wars of the Roses: our monks would have friends in both camps. How exciting the news, as in the see-saw strife each side in turn came uppermost. Later, again, when Caxton brought over his magic instrument, what a flutter in Monastic Scriptoria! "We must root out printing or it will root us out ;" and they said sooth; the printed books, as a flight of angels, winged through the world to conquer for Luther.

Afterwards came a time when conventual drones grew daily more unpopular. Charges more grave than of mere laziness or even of mere luxury were preferred against them, and were not refuted. For some two hundred years visitation had succeeded visitation, but illdoing increased rather than diminished. Moreover, the world coveted the wealth of the convents, so vast, and so useless, as it was now averred, to the nation; and former suppressions in Henry V.'s time were ominously spoken of; the air was full of mutterings, presaging

Not that the Civil War much affected the material interests of the country. Bishop Fleetwood observes that in the twenty years from 1440 to 1460 the price of wheat never rose higher than 8s., "notwithstanding swords were drawn

storms to come.

Shrewd abbots and priors saw the tempest brewing,

What good in nursing their
Rents were no object now;

and shortened sail before it burst. incomes for future spoilers' benefit? their policy was to get leases surrendered, and exact round sums down, by way of fine, upon each renewal.

In 1528 a black cloud rose above the horizon. Wolsey procured a bull from Clement VII. for the suppression of some small neighbour houses those at "Romboro" and "Bliborow" among them '— wherewith to endow his new colleges at Oxford and Ipswich; thus proving, as old Fuller says, " that those religious places were mortall which hitherto had flourished in a seeming destiny"; and thus, too, reminding Henry VIII. that, as "the Cardinall might eat up lean convents, he himself might feed on the fatter ones without danger of a sacrilegious surfeit."

Soon it happened that the Abbey was visited by three royal commissioners, who, it was said, "knew the message they were sent on, and found water enough to drive the mill." And then their reportthe Black Book-was laid on the table of the Commons, whose stern cry-"Down with them!"-must have made our threatened monks' ears tingle. Close upon the report followed an Act of Parliament, that of 1536, which did more than threaten: it dissolved three hundred and seventy-six small religious houses! Not even the bishops now favoured the monks' cause. From his place in Convocation Bishop Fisher of Rochester had, indeed, urged upon his brethren that the spoliation of the lesser houses would teach the King the way to dissolve the greater; and, as was the quaint manner then, he had enforced his argument by a fable: "An ax," he said, "which wanted an handle, came upon a time unto a wood, making his moan to the great trees, that he wanted a handle to work withal, and for that cause he was constrained to sit idle; therefore he made it his request to them, that they would be pleased to grant him one of their small saplings within the wood, to make him a handle, who, mistrusting no guile, granted him one of

1 There are but scant ruins left of Blythburgh Priory, but the church is one of the finest Perpendicular churches in Suffolk, and the place "is memorable," as Weever says, "for that Anna, King of the East Angles, together with his eldest sonne and heire-apparent, Ferminius, were here buried, both slaine in a bloodye fierce battail by Penda, the Mercian king, a Pagan.

Penda anone his hoste with hym he led,

And on Anna came fyrst with mykle pride,

Kynge of East Englonde who`- daughter Egfryde wed,
And slew him."

Bede says that Anna was a man of great virtue. His bones, and those of his son, were removed to St. Edmund's Bury.